Too many roads in SA to fix

THE Johannesburg Road Agency will not be able to fix all the city's streets, roads and bridges before the Soccer World Cup kicks off in June.

THE Johannesburg Road Agency will not be able to fix all the city's streets, roads and bridges before the Soccer World Cup kicks off in June.

Rehana Moosajee, a member of the mayoral committee on transport, said there were too many roads to be fixed.

"We will not get it all done in one go but we have a list of roads that are high priority and they will be fixed before the World Cup."

She said the council had many priorities and fixing roads was just one of them.

"We remain confident that the budget panel is taking priority of our roads and that the roads will get their fair share of the budget," she said.

Meanwhile, JRA chairperson Khehla Shubane revealed that the utility needed another R300 million to fix the city's roads in the next three years. He said about R600 million had been budgetted for 2009-10 financial year.

"The rate of potholes has increased by 61 percent and it's costing us and motorists," Shubane said.

He said this was because they did not get prompt feedback on the state of the roads.